


Tie it up in a Ribbon

by hellkitty



Category: Marvel
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-14
Updated: 2016-12-14
Packaged: 2018-09-08 11:39:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8843305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellkitty/pseuds/hellkitty
Summary: Clint needs some advice in girly things. Pre Civil-War





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mmouse15](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mmouse15/gifts).



"You look...baffled," Natasha stopped by the edge of the computer desk.  

"Huh?" Clint looked up, brow still furrowed from whatever he'd been peering at on the computer's screen. 

"Baffled. You know. Zaputenny." She winked at the way his mouth pinched. He was the only one she felt comfortable dusting off her Russian with.  "Or like Steve says, like a pig looking at a wristwatch." Steve's idioms were apparently odd, even to native English speakers.   

"Yeah, well, I'm definitely feeling that." He pushed back from the desk, tipping his head back with a sigh.  "I don't know how you all do it, Nat." 

"You all?"  Do?  So many questions! And so few answers from Clint. Getting words out of him sometimes was like prying open a bear trap. 

"You know, you," he gave a hand gesture, "female types." 

Female types? "It is hard to believe you are married, sometimes," she teased.  

Clint scrubbed a hand over his face. "Yeah, it surprises me, too, sometimes, why she puts up with me." 

It wasn't that much of a surprise to Natasha. If, well, any of a hundred things had gone differently in both their lives....  But those were futures that would never happen. No use wasting time on those. He had Laura and Natasha had seen how happy they made each other. And while she was no angel, she was not devil enough to want to smear his happiness with her own desires or 'what ifs'.  "Something I can help you with?"

He squinted at her for a long moment. "Yeah. I mean. Maybe."  He shrugged. "It's Lila." 

It took her a moment to place the name. "Your daughter?"  

"Yeah. Look. It's her birthday, soon, and," he gave another shrug, this one looking less like surrender and more like helplessness, gesturing at the screen. "That whole gift thing." 

Natasha swung around, dropping down to a squat, to look at the computer screen.  "Stuffed animals?" Row after row of rounded features, glossy eyes, pastel colors. They were cute, but a bit, well, generic. Then again, maybe growing up in the farmhouse, generic was a novelty. 

"Yeah? I mean. Is that wrong? Is she too old for them?" 

"What else were you thinking?" Because she could only guess--she'd met Lila once, when Lila was still in onesies.  

"That's the problem. I mean, part of me wants to get her flannel. Or a fishing knife. Or a bow."  

"What's wrong with any of those?"  Never too early for a girl to get good with a knife, as far as Natasha was concerned. 

"They're just...me." 

"Something wrong with that?" 

"I just...she could do better than me. Should do better." He tapped the keyboard, typing, she noticed, with only two fingers. It was endearingly inept. "Jewelry? Do girls like jewelry?" 

"Girls do like jewelry," she said, one finger brushing the neck of her blouse--she could feel the small chain with the arrow pendant he'd given her years ago.  "But they like sincerity, best of all." 

"Yeah, well, I got a lot of that. Just don't know how to package that up." 

Natasha laughed--not the throaty laugh she used when she was 'on', but her own, honest laugh.  "Tie yourself up with a ribbon? Or is that more for Laura?" 

"Hey!" He blushed--actually blushed, a full bloom of color over his cheeks.  

"I mean, why not just give her what a little girl wants most of all?"  

He blinked, blankly. "Which is....?" 

Natasha snorted, leaning forward to fillip his nose playfully. "Every girl wants time with her father."

"Come on, Nat. I can't take her with me on a mission!" He looked appalled. 

"Not on a mission. Well, not yet.  But you can do something with her, surely.  Horseback riding, or fishing, or...," it was her turn to shrug. "We could always commandeer a quinjet." 

He laughed. "Yeah, what little girl doesn't want an illicit flight on a secret jet?"  The laugh petered out, to a puzzled expression, his eyes narrowing, the way they did when he squinted into the distance. "Hey, Nat."

"Clint?" She could almost tell what was coming. 

"You doing anything Saturday?" 

"I think I might be delivering a birthday cake via borrowed government property." She'd make it a pretty cake, too, for all the birthday cakes she'd never gotten as a little girl. 

"Sounds like a plan." 

"Good plan." she agreed, and then leaned forward, placing a gentle kiss on his forehead. :Nothing could ever be between the two of them, but Clint had set the bar for any other man almost impossibly high, and she was more than okay with that.  "Just don't forget--a girl can't do much better than a man like you." 

 


End file.
